Upgradable rugged computer server for long-life cycle military applications introduced by GMS
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. – General Micro Systems Inc. (GMS) in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., is introducing the Apex rugged computer server for military and aerospace applications that is designed to evolve and upgrade as system needs change over several years.
The so-called “Forever Server” system is compact, secure, powerful, and modular. It can reduce a rack’s worth of functionality into one product to save size, weight, power (SWaP), as well as total cost of ownership.
The 19-inch rackmount dual Intel Xeon server can replace as much as 17U worth of equivalent equipment in 2U of shelf space. It contains six dense hot swappable modules that can each be upgraded over time.
Apex uses the military standard OpenVPX architecture, and has six subsystems that can be swapped out as technology evolves, and can be upgraded for many years as new technology evolves. In contrast, commercial servers usually become obsolete within 12 to 18 months and are discarded in favor of new hardware.
Apex offers the FlexVPX multi-dimensional fabric backplane that runs natively at PCI Express Gen 3 directly to every subsystem. FlexVPX also is upgradable to faster than 20 gigabits per second. FlexVPX also extends outside of Apex to an expansion chassis for Nvidia GPGPU or Xilinx FPGA co-processor engines for deep learning, data mining, augmented reality, or blockchain.
In today's shipboard applications, dozens of new commercial servers are stowed aboard in advance of deployment to be used as spares. With Apex, the OpenVPX modules are more reliable compared to commercial servers.
Apex modules encompass three key areas: CPU and bus fabric; networking and I/O; and data storage. It uses two Intel Xeon E5 22 core server CPUs, adds 1 terabyte of DDR4 ECC-protected DRAM, and 80 PCI Express Gen 3 8-gigabit-per-second lanes between subsystem modules.
Supporting the CPU subsystem are six 40-gigabit-per-second fiber Ethernet ports, two 1-gigabit-per-second copper Ethernet ports, a baseboard management controller, an HDMI port for console video, six USB 3.0 ports, two USB-C ports with 45-Watt power delivery, and a removable and sanitizable solid-state drive for the operating system.
Powering Apex are three N+1 redundant MIL-STD-704 AC or MIL-STD-1275 DC power supplies and an inboard auxiliary power unit (APU). 400 Hz AC power is available for avionics applications. For more information contact General Micro Systems online at www.gms4sbc.com.
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